Maine takes school ideas to summit Baldacci to moderate event at D.C. meeting

BANGOR – Maine’s early success with high school reform has landed the state a prominent role at a national education summit Saturday and Sunday in Washington, D.C.

Co-sponsored by the National Governors Association, the summit is aimed at helping states raise high school graduation rates at a time when one federal study indicates as many as one-third of students are failing to get a diploma.

Strengthening high school curriculums and ensuring that students are prepared for college and the workplace also are among the issues that will be discussed at the gathering, which will be attended by governors and education and business leaders from across the country.

Gov. John Baldacci has been asked to moderate a discussion on redesigning the American high school. He is one of four governors on an NGA task force chaired by Virginia Gov. Mark Warner that is raising national awareness about the need to revamp high schools and developing a set of recommendations for governors.

Also attending this weekend’s event will be Maine Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron. Both she and Baldacci said in recent interviews they plan to spread the word about the state’s early and continuing efforts to transform high schools and increase the number of students who go on to post-secondary education.

Maine is being recognized for the reform efforts it has been putting forward since the 1990s, said Baldacci. He pointed out that the creation of Maine’s academic standards, known as the Learning Results, and efforts by the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance to encourage more students to study engineering are among a number of initiatives that “have been well-regarded on a national basis.”

Gendron noted that Gov. Warner is now recommending strategies to redesign high schools that were contained in Promising Futures, a high school improvement report issued by the Maine Department of Education in 1998. That report has been recognized nationally as a blueprint for reform. The commissioner plans to let people know about the recently renamed Center for School Transformation, which was established about 7 years ago to help implement the changes proposed in Promising Futures.

She also will talk about the Great Maine School Project, in which a $10 million grant from the Gates Foundation was given in 2003 to 34 Maine high schools for education reform projects.

While she won’t be making any new announcements this weekend, Gendron said, “it should be reassuring to citizens of Maine to know that [while high school reform] is becoming a major thrust for the National Governors Association, Maine has been immersed in this work and the governor has continued to support it.”

The need to improve high schools has slowly been gaining national attention, said Michael Cohen, president of Washington, D.C.-based Achieve, Inc., which is co-sponsoring the weekend gathering.

Cohen, whose nonprofit, bipartisan organization was created to help raise academic standards and achievement in America’s schools, said he hoped participants would come away with a “sense of urgency. This summit is the time and place to translate growing attention into meaningful action,” he said.

In a statement released this week, Achieve cited a study that said one-third of U.S. students drop out of high school before graduation and half of those entering college never earn a degree. Less than one-fifth of the nation’s ninth graders make it from ninth grade to on-time college completion.

According to recommendations by Achieve and the National Governors Association, states should:

. Raise expectations for what students should be required to achieve in high school;

. Identify ways states can transform high schools and create new options for students so more will graduate;

. Provide academic supports for low-performing students and opportunities for high school students to take college level classes;

. Improve the quality of teaching and leadership in high schools;

. Develop new accountability structures to ensure that more students make it through higher education;

. Make education a seamless system of governance from kindergarten through graduate school.

During the weekend event, Gendron plans to discuss the educational reforms that Maine already is working on which correspond with a number of the national recommendations. For example, Maine is working to ensure that all high schools provide a rigorous college preparatory curriculum. The Department of Education also wants to eliminate “tracking” in which students are assigned classes according to their perceived abilities.

Gendron indicated this week that Maine also is planning to host a “town meeting” in May in Portland that will focus on redesigning American high schools. Facilitated by Gov. Warner’s staff, the gathering will include students, parents and community members from across the state who will discuss what’s working and what’s not in the state’s high schools.